


AstroCafé

by sunsleeping



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, Post-Canon Fix-It, Tags Will Be Added Once Relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26547541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsleeping/pseuds/sunsleeping
Summary: Pete is alive. Jackie is alive. Rose is trying. The Doctor is dead, but here he's alive, and Jack... Jack's just trying to make sure it all happens differently this time.This isn't "Pete's World" and this isn't home. Home is gone. Jack doesn't know where he is, but he knows that he's going to try to save it.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness, Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, The Doctor/Jack Harkness, The Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	AstroCafé

The warm scent of freshly baked bread drifted along the breeze, luring and enchanting passersby. The café itself was brick on the outside and brick on the inside, with large, floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across the front of the first floor. The second and third floors held large, vertical windows, curtained with light and dark brown to conceal the workings of those floors.

Just inside, on the dark walnut floors, cute, circular and square tables with bright red, green, orange, blue, and brown leather seating for two to three sat students and workers and friends at brunch: with laptops, tablets, cute little mocktails (and presumably a few cocktails too), coffees, teas, and platters. There was a woman with a short, bright pixie cut with a few streaks of pink and a bright pink uniform sweeping the floors, her grin radiant as she went about her business.

Jack faltered outside of the café’s open set of glass double doors, breathing in and out as the melancholy of the scene washed over him. He’d never known a café Rose, in his original universe. He fought down the emotions that the thought of it brought rising in his throat, relaxing his shoulders and unclenching his jaw.

It wouldn’t do to be tense on a day like that day was meant to be.

He allowed his eyes to fall closed, his dark lashes fanning out against his skin. The sounds of the Londoners all around him faded away. He could do this. He could do this.

He was strong. He was a survivor.

Adjusting his artron dampener and hoping that his gear was primed as it had been that morning, he opened his eyes, pulled up the corners of his lips to an easy smile, and waltzed inside.

The Doctor was trying to distract himself. It had been officially one Earth night since the mannequin incident, and he was trying to keep himself together. Gallifrey was gone. He’d met a cute human! He’d timelocked his own entire species and countless others. Humans were fun and he was on planet Earth! In the twenty-first century! With danger involved!

He was failing to keep his spirits up, quite understandably. His blood was magma in his veins, burning through him from the inside out. He could almost feel his skin crumbling, but no, it felt waxy to his own touch. Waxy and fake. His teeth were too heavy, too sharp. He was a murderer.

There was the smell of something in the air, gluten. His face perked up as he sought a deeper whiff before he could stop himself, and his blood turned from magma to acid, shocking his system.

He hated himself. He hated everything about himself. He should be dead. He’d saved so many lives. He’d all but ended so many lives, suspending them permanently in a single, terrible Moment of their existence.

He was walking towards the smell of gluten and, before he knew it, passing through the big glass doors of some sort of—what was it, a twenty-first century café? It smelled nice and seemed brighter, more comfortable, than he deserved.

Behind a black marble bar were dark shelves of alcohol, prices ranging from affordable to what would clearly only be feasible for purchase of the incredibly wealthy. Those bottles were probably more for show than anything. Still, it was an odd investment for some little shop in the streets of London.

While more square tables, square and circular, of different sizes and different chair types extended to the leftmost wall, the rightmost was covered in large bookshelves, from the floor to the ceiling, just like the windows.

The Doctor frowned and walked over to check some of those out, his leather boots squeaking on the freshly mopped and broomed flooring. He picked one up, pulling it out to look at the title. He recognized the name of the author from some sort of social movement, but he wasn’t certain which. He flipped it over to its back, immediately noticing its lack of a price tag.

His eyes drifted over to the nearest table, where a young man with dark hair, some sort of hipster slouchy hat, and a red flannel sat talking to a waitress in bright pink. The two were laughing about something as the man pulled a beast of a heavy laptop out of his leather shoulderbag.

The Doctor looked closer, trying to be inconspicuous, as the waitress turned around. Her eyes met his and immediately time stopped.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed, seemingly offended by his mere presence.

“What about you?” he asked, manipulating his tone to respond in kind.

“I work here.”

“I thought you worked at the shop that blew up last night.”

“Yeah? Well _somebody_ ,” she scoffed, gesturing to him, “just happened to blow up my job and now I’m stuck working for mum again.”

“Ooh, is that tea in the teashop?” the customer that she’d been waitressing asked, in a distinctly American accent.

The Doctor tilted his face down to level him with a glare. The American grinned back.

 _Annoying_ , the Doctor immediately named him.

“I think it’s terrorism, actually,” the waitress decided.

“It’s not terrorism if I’m saving lives,” the Doctor necessitated.

Then, he flinched. It most definitely was terrorism even if he was saving lives. He’d timelocked Gallifrey.

The waitress eyed him with some sort of sharpness that he knew meant she’d caught his little slip. _Annoying_ did too. She sighed.

“Look, can I get you a seat, or?”

“How much are the books?”

She crossed her arms.

“I’m sorry?”

“I asked how much the books are.”

“They’re 2 quid each, donated things. You can read them at your leisure within the Bad Wolf café if you don’t want to buy. Kids can have them free of charge.”

He looked from the book to her.

“Are you running a charity?” he asked.

The waitress—no, her nametag read Rose, looked back at her other customer, then to him again.

“Kind of, yes,” she offered. “Now, can I help you find a table, or?”

The Doctor looked between Rose and _Annoying_ , back and forth once and then again. _Annoying_ pulled his shoulderbag from the chair opposite of him to instead set it gently beneath his seat, up against the leg holding it up. He raised his brows.

“That’ll work fine,” the Doctor answered, raising his own in what he hoped seemed to be a merry return, taking the seat across from him.

Rose stared at the both of them, something simultaneously curious and judging, before seeming to accept it. Sometimes strangers still randomly meet and become friends in the twenty-first century, it’s not all dating apps and social media. Honestly, the Doctor felt that he had a greater understanding of twentieth century English customs than the twentieth century English.

He was disastrously wrong, but no one would think to tell him so if he never brought it up.

“And can I get anything for you?” Rose hmphed, pulling out her little waiter pad from where she’d stored it under her arm while they talked.

“Just a cup of Earl Grey, if you don’t mind,” the Doctor replied.

Rose nodded, scribbling something quickly down onto her pad, and then wandered off.

“You didn’t bring any money with you, did you?” _Annoying_ asked, an annoying smirk on his face.

The Doctor looked up, half-panicked and half-curious.

“How did you know that?” he asked.

 _Annoying_ simply snorted and looked away. The Doctor wondered, was it something about his look?

“So, you blew up her job on the first date. That’s never a good start,” _Annoying_ was saying, as he looked down at his smartphone like whatever was on it was more interesting than the Doctor.

 _Annoying_ was probably right to think so. The Doctor huffed.

“Sometimes arson is necessary,” he replied.

 _Annoying_ snorted again, then raised his twinkling eyes, clearly amused.

“Jack,” he offered, holding out his hand.

The Doctor stared at it for a moment, confounded, then looked back at _Annoying_ ’s face.

“No, I thought your name was Annoying,” he protested.

 _Annoying_ let out a little breathy sound, not quite a huff and not quite a laugh, and said, “Tough crowd I see.”

The Doctor gave one nod, for effect, then took his hand and shook it just before _Annoying_ might have pulled it away.

“Jack. Interesting name. So what brings you to London?”

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

“Business trip, not much else. You?”

“The same, I’m sure.”

Just then, another waiter dropped by, setting down a tray holding some sort of overly sugary and overly caffeinated coffee, an Earl Grey, and a small plate of an assortment of mini pastries. Jack grabbed what appeared to be a blueberry something first, taking a bite immediately and closing his eyes at the flavor. He moaned, the sound irritatingly sensual, and allowed his eyes to flutter open. He fixed his gaze on the Doctor.

“You can have a few, if you want,” he offered.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” the Doctor kindly refused, retreating to the comfortable land of not getting involved with people.

Jack laughed. “I’m already paying for your drink,” he reminded.

“Ah.”

The Doctor hadn’t thought that this body was capable of blushing. Casual, non-soul-crushing shame was an interesting thing.

“Alright then.”

He gingerly picked up a tiny pastry with a criss-cross design on top, with bright red and fruity scent of a fruity raspberry filling spilling out from its ends. He took a bite, then swallowed the rest whole.

It was… good. It was really good.

It was better than he deserved.

The initial sunshine of his demeanor upon biting into the pastry was overcome by rainclouds faster than Gallifrey had been destroyed.

Jack was looking at him with a strange expression, the Doctor noticed, when he finally snapped back to attention. It looked like he had something to say, but he didn’t. Instead, the man shook his head, then offered a genuine smile.

“You alright there?” he asked.

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, before offering a gentle smile of his own.

“Yeah. Just thinking,” he answered.

Jack studied him for a moment longer, before his phone beeped with one notification or another. He glanced down at the screen and cursed.

“Shit. Um, how about this…,” he reached down into his bag and pulled out a little slip of paper, quickly scribbling something down onto it.

He reached over to the Doctor’s hand, dropping the little slip into it and curling the Doctor’s fingers around it with a smile as he slammed a wad of money down onto the table.

“Gotta go, investigating in operation,” he quickly explained. “Give me a call if you ever need a friend?”

The Doctor uncurled his fingers from the little slip of paper, realizing that it was a phone number written onto it.

“I-I guess?” he responded.

Jack offered him a tight smile.

“Best any of us can do. Don't make my contact name 'Annoying.'” He stood up and dropped his bulky laptop into his bag, already walking away. “Later!” he called over his shoulder.

The Doctor watched him go, confused and with his feelings muddled. It had seemed as though Jack had sat down to get some work done, what with pulling the bulky laptop that he hadn’t used out of his back. Perhaps he’d intruded.

“Yeah, later,” he murmured.

He had his own investigating to do.

Rose was trying. She was trying very, very hard, to keep her life together. She was studying for her degree, she was working, she was apparently having her job blown up, and now apparently she was also having her mother’s business—her old? New? Both? Job, which she lived directly above, broken into.

It was also being broken into, mind you, by the very same man who’d blown up her last job, and some other guy he’d met during working hours in the very café that he was breaking into that day.

“How the fuck did you get in without setting off the alarm?” Rose asked, holding out a gun that definitely didn’t belong in her century, her finger poised on the trigger, as ‘the Doctor’ and ‘Jack’ held their hands in the air.

“You should be asking him that,” the Doctor answered, nodding his head towards Jack.

“I mean, fair,” Jack added unhelpfully.

“Answer the question!” she demanded.

“Well, you see,” the Doctor tried to start—

And that was when everything went to hell.


End file.
